To be honest, I was sorting out the memory on my phone a while ago and saw the Honkai Impact 2 icon again. I clicked in and saw that the update package was quite large. I finally logged in successfully and saw the familiar Kiana standing at the gate of Qianyu Academy, suddenly feeling a little dazed. 😅
No need to brag, this old guy from 2014 can still play well today. MiHoYo was still a small workshop back then, and the vertical screen shooting gameplay of Honkai Impact 2 was considered a breath of fresh air at the end of Saipan. Looking back now, I can see that it actually captured several key points: first, the operational upgrade brought about by the explosive performance of mobile phone hardware, second, the break of the two-dimensional culture, and third, the free in-app purchase model became mainstream.
But what's interesting is that the success of Honkai Impact 2 is not based on the creation of any earth-shattering gameplay. It wins in the details: the personification of equipment allows players to establish an emotional connection with the weapons, the difficult boss battles satisfy the challenge of core players, and the sense of despair and hope in the plot are just right. In today's mobile game environment, these are still "slow efforts" ignored by many manufacturers.
Looking at the current mobile game market, there are always open worlds, 3A picture quality, and big IP linkages. But what really makes people want to come back five or ten years later is a "small but beautiful" sincere work like Honkai Impact 2. It does not seek to be stunning in every frame, but retains users with stable updates and sincere activities. From 2014 to now, how many ups and downs have you experienced in mobile games? But Honkai Impact 2 is still alive, even pretty well.
I think this gives the industry a revelation: the future of mobile games is not necessarily about getting more and more focused on picture quality and numerical values, but about returning to the two essences of "fun" and "companionship." Many of the players of Honkai Impact 2 have been playing since they were students. This kind of emotional bond that spans ten years is more precious than any paid design.
Of course, there are also limitations of the times. For example, the early guidance system was indeed not as user-friendly as it is now, and the difficulty curve of some levels is a bit steep today. But if you ask me if it's worth it for newcomers now, my answer is: if you are tired of those formulaic games with automatic combat, automatic pathfinding, and automatic completion of everything, and just want to get back that sense of accomplishment that “your hands are still shaking after completing the level”, then Honkai Impact 2 is still a treasure.
Finally, I heard that miHoYo is currently busy with Honkai Impact and Genshin Impact, but the team of Honkai Impact 2 is still maintaining it, which deserves praise. The fact that a ten-year-old game can continue to be updated is the best tribute to players. 👏
I'm not bragging, but if you have experienced the data packet era, used a touch screen machine to play barrage shooting, then you should understand the sentiment I am talking about. If you are a new player, you can also see the evolution history of mobile games in the past ten years from Honkai Impact 2 - from pixels to high definition, from stand-alone to online, from fragmentation to immersion. Honkai Impact 2 is precisely the coordinate point connecting the past and the present.